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Makin, William J

Entry updated 12 September 2022. Tagged: Author.

(1893-1944) UK journalist and author who was in active service during World War One, a prolific writer of magazine fiction beginning in the 1920s, his first work of genre interest being "The Black Laugh" in Strange Tales of Mystery and Terror for January 1932. At least one of his Jonathan Jow tales, the novel-length "The Monster of the Loch" (20 January-3 March 1934 Pearson's Weekly) with Leslie Arliss (1901-1987), is sf, and features a plesiosaur (see Loch Ness Monster); it is included in The Exploits of Jonathan Jow (coll of linked stories 1936). The Return of Doctor X (1939), a Vampire movie, was based on his "The Surgeon's Secret" (12 January 1935 Thriller; vt "The Doctor's Secret" 30 July 1938 Detective Fiction Weekly).

Makin's confused but inventive Scientific Romance, Murder at Full Moon (1937), features a Mad Scientist who believes there is superior life on the Moon, and who has invented a Machine capable of harnessing moonlight, with which he causes tidal waves, earthquakes and other Disasters. [JC]

William James Makin

born Bolton, Lancashire: 29 December 1893 [Chorlton, Lancashire, where the birth was registered, has also been given]

died near Chartres, France: 26 August 1944

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